Getting the X-Wing out of the swamp.

Those of you who know me know that I am a very habitual person. I tend to do the same things every day, eat the same things, go the same places. Recently I abandoned one of my usual haunts (several reasons) and it has been taking a toll on me. For the past week I haven't been eating well, I've been sleeping too much, and generally not been doing to well.

It all kind of came to a head this weekend when I found that I didn't have any reason to get out of bed on Saturday. I laid on the couch-that-hurts-my-back all day and read a schlocky fantasy novel even though I knew it would hurt my back and make me feel generally like crud. And it did. I felt like crud and my back hurt.

Today (Sunday) I did the same thing until I finished the novel and found that now I really didn't have anything to do. Of course I knew that I should be doing something. I had wanted to roller-ski on Saturday and run on Sunday, but I just couldn't find the motivation to do it. Finally at about 2 in the afternoon on Sunday I got out of the house, got some coffee and some internet and felt better.

We'll see if this lifestyle change is going to be worth the trouble or if I should just go back to old habits. At least I'm reading a better book now.

I did make it out to Ada Hayden and roller-skied today. It didn't go quite as I had planned though. I found that I couldn't skate like I had wanted to. I had always used the skis for classic technique and now I found that the skis really wanted to trip me up when I tried to skate. I'm not sure exactly what the problem was. It could be that I have the bindings mounted too far forward, or that I have floppy combi boots, or soft flexors. It could just be bad technique.

So I double-poled around the lake for 20k or so. I haven't double poled that much since attempting the Arrowhead in '08. I quit at 70 miles that year and couldn't lift my arms for days afterwards.

Since I've been doing some upper body strength work I think I did better than I might have otherwise. It was tough work, but I managed to be faster than all the runners, though slower than the bikers and skaters. By February I hope to be faster than at least half of the bikers.